Contractors are now planning to dismantle the beached and broken Davy Crockett right where it sits.
Workers will encircle the 431-foot barge with a cofferdam, forming an enclosed area, and take it apart piece by piece. The original plan of floating it away to a dry dock proved to be untenable, marking another setback in an operation that’s already the most expensive shipwreck in Washington history.
Until this week, federal and state authorities had been planning to cut the ship in two and float both halves away to a dry dock.
But officials said they were unable to reach agreements with local shipyards.
“Unfortunately, the efforts to gain utilization of the local dry docks for destruction of the Crockett were unsuccessful due to a litany of safety, complex environmental and liability issues,” U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Daniel LeBlanc said.
Instead, contractors will encircle the vessel with 850 feet of metal sheet pilings to allow workers to safely dismantle the ship while containing pollution.
Construction of the cofferdam will begin as soon as Friday.
The sheet pilings and a secondary silt barrier will enable contractors to cut apart the Crockett while minimizing the risk of PCB-tainted oil or bunker fuel escaping into the river, state and federal officials said in a conference call on Monday.
But it will be expensive.
The operation had already consumed $9.5 million as of Monday, LeBlanc said, and it currently has the ability to tap another $4 million.
Costs have risen throughout the saga, which began two months ago after the Coast Guard ordered owner Brett Simpson of Ellensburg to remove oil and garbage aboard the damaged ship. Simpson had been attempting to scrap the vessel while it was afloat, but the process caused it to buckle and partially sink.
On Jan. 27, three days after the Coast Guard assumed Simpson complied with its order, oil-spill specialists with the state Department of Ecology traced a sheen 15 miles upriver to the Davy Crockett.
The Coast Guard then federalized the response.
The cleanup is being funded by the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, a federal fund created by a tax on petroleum products. Simpson has not participated in the cleanup and is the subject of a parallel investigation by federal authorities.
LeBlanc said officials won’t have a final cost estimate at least until the lead contractor — Seattle-based Ballard Diving & Salvage — submits a formal destruction plan later this week.
“Once we get the plan for the destruction phase, that will give us a better idea,” LeBlanc said. “Following the removal of the vessel, we will then have a disposal plan for steel and oily water, a follow-up sampling of sediment within the cofferdam and remediation cost to restore the environment in that location.”
The contractor’s best estimate was to finish the operation in 16 weeks, LeBlanc said.
Ron Holcomb, on-scene coordinator for the Washington Department of Ecology, said Ballard has been asked to procure the biggest possible crane to reduce the number of cuts. The idea is to load big chunks of the vessel aboard a waiting barge.
“This cofferdam, when installed, will provide a very high level of environmental protection around the Davy Crockett,” Holcomb said.
The sheet pilings are 3/8 of an inch thick, with 25-inch-wide interlocking joints. The joints won’t be watertight, but the cofferdam combined with the secondary nonpermeable silt barrier should effectively trap pollutants as contractors work. LeBlanc said the cofferdam will take 12 days to install.
Meanwhile, the Coast Guard is planning to set lighted buoys to designate a 300-foot safety zone around the vessel.
“We did have some encroachment of recreational fishermen a couple of weeks ago,” LeBlanc said. “Since the salmon season has kicked into gear now, we’re concerned about their safety and also the safety of the workers at the site.”
The recovery effort has already eclipsed the cost of removing the S.S. Catala from the beach at Ocean Shores in 2006.
That shipwreck actually occurred in 1965, but was exposed three decades later by shifting sands. When oil was discovered entombed aboard the 229-foot vessel, the state Department of Ecology embarked on what became the most expensive maritime cleanup in state history — $7.2 million.
The Davy Crockett is already costlier.
“It’s much more complicated here, where everything is on water,” Holcomb said.
Erik Robinson: 360-735-4551, or erik.robinson@columbian.com.
